The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: LordVreeg

Quote from: Luminous Crayon
I get more and more uncomfortable the more orcs are used to explore issues of racism.

expand on this.

Okay, but first I am going to let a couple of other people summarize my problems:

Quote from: S_AIf I want to explore real world issues I will use actual people thankyouverymuch.

Quote from: polycarpand on a thematic level, there's nothing I ever needed orcs for that I couldn't accomplish with cruel, malicious, or simply servile humans

This is sort of difficult for me to fit words around, but I'm going to try to hit it real fast:

1.) The players in your game are all human. When a character in your game is nonhuman, they are substantively other. When nonhuman characters are used to illustrate real-world issues of race, you are, at best, edging towards some unfortunate associations by othering minorities. (At worst, you are straight-up linking the idea of race with a caricature-- see Shadowrun and "orksploitation", because, holy sgit this is a thign.)

2.) Orcs in a lot of games (and in the "gamer zeitgeist" in general, if that's a thing) serve the purpose of being the bad guys that it's okay to kill-- because they're innately evil, because they're subhuman, because they're inevitably pawns of the true evil mastermind, whatever. The fact that we're having this thread is, I think, a demonstration that it's not really possible to totally get away from that. The minute you start to do the whole thing of "in this setting, orcs represent [ethnic group]" for any reason, you're linking [ethnic group] with the idea of being permissible targets. You can have whatever lofty sociological ideals you want, but at some point some player is going to hear your "I'm using orcs to illustrate what it's like to be a minority and face prejudice, let's all explore these complex issues with empathy and thoughtfulness" and respond with "whatever, I just shoot him, he's just an orc" because that's what games are conditioned to find acceptable. And then all you've done is created something uncomfortable.

3.) Because I'm just some dumb white dude, and what the hell do I know about being a minority that would make me feel able to make any kind of meaningful point about a minority's experience using as hamfisted a metaphor as a "race" (goddamn, what a challenging word, especially in the context of this discussion) in a roleplaying game. Especially given how much you're basically got to speak in generalities when you're writing game material. Do you want to produce material on what orcs are like, and what orcs think, and what orcs do, knowing all along that orcs are your covert (or overt!) stand-in for an actual minority group that exists, a member of which may read this material? I don't, because honestly that makes me feel hella weird.

But again, what do I know about it, just some white dude.

I agree. I generally don't use nonhuman races because I don't find enough to distinguish them without potentially relying on some trite and potentially offensive associations to real-world races. If I'm going to have the "these guys are basically the [Country X] race" or some other simple allusion, then the least I can do is make them human just like the actual people who live in Country X-- and that works better anyway because I hate mono-cultural races.

That said, Asura has the Ammonitians, who are definitely the other, and, in some ways, their other-ness and convenience to use as an antagonist means that they're my setting's "orcs." However, they are telepathic cephalopod Lovecraftian horrors, so their other-ness is, well... pretty 'other' from anything resembling humanity. So I think I'm safe from upsetting anyone, unless Cthulhu is reading Asura.

Yeah, heck, it's fine to have an other and it's fine to have a dedicated antagonist, I just think you have to be really careful how you define them.

One of the main ways I painted myself into a corner with Jade Stage stuff is by using a bunch of nonhuman species when I probably should have just used "people" and saved myself a lot of trouble, but hey, you live and learn.

LC, do you run away from gender issues as well?  Sexual issues?  Or does it not occur that being some white dude (dude being operative) would make that just as charged?  

The fact that we cannot get away from this has little to do with a fantasy race being equated to something reality as it does the fact that racism, classism, sexism, nationalism actually do exist.

When we are kids, we played cowboys and indians or the equiv.  Or Gurls vs boeys.  I had no issue in 1976 with orcs and goblins being evil races and the whole idea of supposedly sentient races being unable to break from the alignment yoke.  

I consider it sort of part of my evolution creating more complicated and deeper setting stories; trying to not only play with races or genders or mores or cultural issues, but to set up the setting specific realities that challenge the fantasy paradigms.  I don't just game to escape; I game to challenge myself and my players artistically and intellectually.

Not saying you are wrong in anything you said; for god's sake, I love our discussions.  Orcs in my settings are less of a stand-in for an actual minority as they are one of many minorities, and more of a focus on the way a thing can BE versus how it is perceived.

Quote from: LordVreeg
LC, do you run away from gender issues as well?  Sexual issues?  Or does it not occur that being some white dude (dude being operative) would make that just as charged?  

What I do not do is: have some elaborate construct of fiction stand in for women so that I can examine women's issues without using characters who are women, only caricatures of women. Because that's the thing that's really analogous to what we're talking about here.

ed:

like, for instance, what if I wrote a world where there was one species, with high psychological/morphological contrast between the sexes? The males are all just, you know, regular human dudes. The females are mermaids. They're one species, though, just the men are like this and the women are like this. Also, the females are all obsessed with shiny objects and jewelery, and their emotions are cursed to change with the phases of the moon, and society generally considers them inferior at math and science. But remember, I'm just writing this so that we can explore gender inequality issues!

you'd probably consider that to be pretty weird and gross. because it is! because it's taking a societally disadvantaged group and othering and stereotyping that group at the same time

ed ed:

honestly if you want to use games to open up a conversation on bigotry and privilege I think that is great, but using monster species as the tool to do this with seems like a very problematic way to approach that issue

Any time you create a fantasy world with different rules than reality you create an elaborate construct that stands in for what we see as a gender role, a social class, etc.  Do magic using sentients analogize with the higher social classes?  Your gender roles are exactly as we have them in 2013, and so you are using males and females exactly as they are today, as opposed to using an elaborate construct of fiction known as your setting's reality?

These differences can be immature and mature, gross and delicate, poorly done or well done.  The same as fiction.  Creating an RPG setting, in this wise, is similar to writing a story.  It can be gross, or timid, or written for the lowest common denominator.  Or it can try to deal with this shit, as best as a writer can.  I don;t claim any high ground, LC.  I am an old writer and psychologist, and unwilling to not try.

I really want to answer those questions but I am super tired so it's going to have to be later; prod me if I don't get back to this.

Quote from: Luminous Crayon
I really want to answer those questions but I am super tired so it's going to have to be later; prod me if I don't get back to this.

good night, man.  Great talking to you

Quote from: LuminousBecause I'm just some dumb white dude, and what the hell do I know about being a minority that would make me feel able to make any kind of meaningful point about a minority's experience using as hamfisted a metaphor as a "race" (goddamn, what a challenging word, especially in the context of this discussion) in a roleplaying game.

You might be saying this in jest, but we "minorities" are no better equipped to talk about these things than you are. What you're talking about is called empathy. "Dumb white dudes" have as much of it as anyone else.

Quote from: Salacious AngelIf I want to explore real world issues I will use actual people thankyouverymuch.

Having said this...

Sci-fi and fantasy being what they are, there are infinite varieties of otherworldly issues we might raise that are sufficiently familiar as to reflect or recontextualise our own experience.

So it's not that orcs in any permutation - or even Luminous' vapid bauble-loving mermaids - are useless storytelling tools. The trap lies in false equivalences.

Quote from: J. R. R. TolkienI cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

To your point, Sailor, even the idea that racial issues always equate to a majority/minority position, so much as a dynamic issue, is up to the author and should not be assumed for the point of this communication.  I ran and played very different games back in the 70s and 80s, with common, simplified stereotypical orcs, goblins, etc.  And that was fine then.

One of the reasons to use them in particular now, but to enrich and deepen their culture and history as well, is in juxtaposition with the trite, alignment-based, 'enemy-race' I used then that is still common.  My Steel Isle group fought against some tribal ogrillites and allied with others (Trine Guldana), and that was accomplishing one of the goals in bringing their sentience to the fore. 

Quote from: LordVreegeven the idea that racial issues always equate to a majority/minority position, so much as a dynamic issue, is up to the author and should not be assumed for the point of this communication

I don't know what this statement is in response to.

EDIT: Is this tangent sufficiently on topic or should it get its own digs?

Quote from: LordVreegOne of the reasons to use them in particular now, but to enrich and deepen their culture and history as well, is in juxtaposition with the trite, alignment-based, 'enemy-race' I used then that is still common.  My Steel Isle group fought against some tribal ogrillites and allied with others (Trine Guldana), and that was accomplishing one of the goals in bringing their sentience to the fore.

This is fine when you're deliberately subverting long-held expectations.  Back when orcs were overwhelmingly uniformly evil, it was even cutting edge commentary.  Given the history of your games that you've described, it makes a certain narrative sense to be subversive in that manner, given that that's the direction you want to go in.  When designing a setting from scratch, however - from the ground up, without that previous baggage - the expectations you're subverting are ones you yourself have just created, which doesn't quite have the same effect.

Personally, I just don't feel that "orcs are people too" is meaningful in the present cultural moment.  It feels a bit played out, like a tract condemning chattel slavery in 2013.  Perhaps that's a narrow cultural view - there are people younger than me for whom, presumably, the only "orcs" they know are the uniformly wicked ones in the LotR movies - but it seems to me to be a relevant subcultural view.  Someone posting an "always chaotic evil" humanoid race on the CBG today, particularly an orcish one, would feel like a weird throwback to me, and thus a more "neutral" take on orcs intended to challenge that seems sort of irrelevant.

Quote from: Polycarp

Quote from: LordVreegOne of the reasons to use them in particular now, but to enrich and deepen their culture and history as well, is in juxtaposition with the trite, alignment-based, 'enemy-race' I used then that is still common.  My Steel Isle group fought against some tribal ogrillites and allied with others (Trine Guldana), and that was accomplishing one of the goals in bringing their sentience to the fore.

This is fine when you're deliberately subverting long-held expectations.  Back when orcs were overwhelmingly uniformly evil, it was even cutting edge commentary.  Given the history of your games that you've described, it makes a certain narrative sense to be subversive in that manner, given that that's the direction you want to go in.  When designing a setting from scratch, however - from the ground up, without that previous baggage - the expectations you're subverting are ones you yourself have just created, which doesn't quite have the same effect.

Personally, I just don't feel that "orcs are people too" is meaningful in the present cultural moment.  It feels a bit played out, like a tract condemning chattel slavery in 2013.  Perhaps that's a narrow cultural view - there are people younger than me for whom, presumably, the only "orcs" they know are the uniformly wicked ones in the LotR movies - but it seems to me to be a relevant subcultural view.  Someone posting an "always chaotic evil" humanoid race on the CBG today, particularly an orcish one, would feel like a weird throwback to me, and thus a more "neutral" take on orcs intended to challenge that seems sort of irrelevant.

Sometimes it is hard to be all that cutting edge all the time when you are talking about something you did over twenty years ago.  I apologize.  The setting is turning 3o next month, however.
But, yes, the scene was a bit different then.  Human-centric worlds were not just the norm, the friggin' rulebooks said that was what it was built for; so creating a world where humans were no longer the dominant race, where Orcs and hobyts were more common, to the point of the OP.

I've never intended to nor have I seen orcs used as an allegory to any specific real-world racism. Okay, here's where I get preachy. If you don't want to read about me standing up on my soap-box, skip the spoiler.
[spoiler]I, personally, just can't get away from the idea that orcs can experience racism just like humans. Orcs are not an allegory for african people, native americans, or any other group of humans who have suffered from racism; they're orcs. They're not exactly human, but they're practically the same. They're alive and they make choices just like people.

I can't believe in an entire species that inherently does wrong. It can happen in an RPG setting, of course, and those settings can be great; it's just something I can't wrap my head around. To me, orcs are alive, and living things make choices, and those choices determine how they deserve to be treated in a just world.

To a guy like me, giving orcs a chance is not about challenging my friends with edgy slam-gamemastering about racism; it's just a fact of any world I imagine. There's no such thing as an evil living thing; there are only living things which make choices that cause others to view them as evil.

I'm not recommending the use of orcs as an allegory for real-world racism; orcs are often an example of fantasy-setting racism. If you persecute and attack a sentient living thing because of their appearance and not because of their actions, that's racist. If the orc didn't do anything wrong, he shouldn't punished or harmed. Assuming that an orc did wrong and deserves to be harmed on the sole basis that he's an orc is racist.

Unless, of course, the setting assumes that orcs are completely inherently evil (although I'd always be dubious of the method by which this is determined). In that case they don't get the same benefit of the doubt that most other living things do.
[/spoiler]
The short version is that orcs need not be an allegory for real racism; if they're truly inherently evil, like a demon, than it's okay to behead them on sight. However, if they're not inherently evil, and one orc gets hacked and/or slashed for what some other orc did, that's racist.

Quote from: PolycarpPersonally, I just don't feel that "orcs are people too" is meaningful in the present cultural moment.

I can see it as being an overused convention, but it's still relevant. Have you ever heard an American refer to a resident of Iraq as a "Hadji"? Dehumanization isn't a 20th century problem, is a human problem.

If anyone's every played Victoriana, they made the oh-so-tasteful choice to make the orcs "noble savage" natives of Africa and then tried to very quickly justify away all the incredibly-unfortunate implications of such.

Regardless of what Tolkien's actual intent may have been, you can't pretend like a mongrel race of dark-skinned degenerate cannibals with broad noses and slanted eyes threatening to destroy Nordic-inspired civilization (alongside several even more overtly Orientalist villains) isn't incredibly insensitive at the very least, particularly because that particular trope wasn't as central theme in fantasy writing at the time.